New York is probably one of the best places to study Chinese outside of China, as it has a large number of establishments that teach the language as well as an abundant Chinese community with a high level of education. In this article, we are going to analyze where to study Chinese in New York and what to keep in mind when doing so.

The Chinese community in New York

New York is considered the city with the largest number of residents of Chinese origin outside of China, with more than 800,000 people, and contains at least 6 “Chinatowns.” Its Chinese communities are very diverse. While historically, they mainly came from the rural areas of Fujian and Zhejian, with a limited knowledge of Mandarin, over the past years, many Chinese people from different areas with high levels of education have established themselves in the city. Because of this, today, New York is one of the best places to find quality native Mandarin teachers.

Public schools in New York

The Confucius Institute

The Confucius Institute is the institution that represents the China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (Hanban), an institution within the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, and which is responsible for promoting Chinese language and culture across the globe. The Confucius Institute collaborates with different universities in New York, such as Pace University, SUNY College of Optometry and The State University of New York. At these centers, you will be able to find Chinese lessons taught by the Confucius Institute.

China Institute

The China Institute was founded in 1926 to promote intercultural collaboration between the United States and China, and is the oldest educational institution of its type in the United States. Since 2006, the China Institute and Hanban have been collaborating, thus creating the first Confucius Institute in the city. Its institution offers all sorts of culture and language classes as well as workshops intended both for native and non-native speakers.

Private schools

Mandarin House

Mandarin House is an educational establishment specialized in teaching Chinese, with multiple branches in China as well as in the city of New York. It is certified by the Hanban, which means that its students have the possibility of writing official HSK, BCT and YCT exams at its centers. It offers a multitude of courses for adults, children and professionals, as well as both individual and group lessons. Its lessons use its own materials and its teachers hold degrees in teaching Chinese. It also offers the possibility of going to China to study while living with a local family. Without a doubt, this is an establishment to consider, although its price is quite high.

Fast Learning Chinese

Fast Learning Chinese is a small private school located in Manhattan with more than 10 years of experience teaching Chinese. Fast Learning Chinese has a very good reputation and is an ideal option for people looking for more personalized teaching and more close-up treatment. The groups are small and classes have a good price. It is also possible to try out the first lesson for free before signing up for the course.

What to keep in mind before signing up for a Chinese class in New York

There is no doubt that the previous list is missing many schools that also offer quality courses. Even so, there are a few things that you should keep in mind before choosing a center to study Chinese. Below, I list the most common problems that people run into with respect to courses available in the city, and which have a decisive effect on quality.

1. Teachers

One of the main problems that many language academies have is the inability to assess the quality of Chinese teachers. Finding good Chinese teachers in New York can be a bit complicated at times.

As opposed to what happens with native speakers of other languages, Chinese people residing abroad largely tend to come from rural areas, where dialects very different from standard Mandarin are spoken, such as from the provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian. Being Chinese does not mean that someone is a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese, and even less so that they know how to teach.

The fact that a school teaches multiple languages does not qualify it to teach Chinese, especially if it doesn’t have a person who is capable of evaluating the teacher’s level of skill in the language. Because of this, I recommend that before choosing a course, you ask yourself: Who chooses the teachers?

2. Study programs

Chinese is a language that is very different from Western languages, which means that to learn it, you can’t use the same system as for other languages. One of the common problems that educational centers have is copying study programs that have given good results for other languages like French or Spanish.

If you combine this with the fact that the majority of Chinese teachers have not been trained in teaching Chinese to non-native speakers, it’s very likely that they won’t have a teaching method and will follow the school’s study program, designed by someone who doesn’t even know how to speak Chinese.

3. Wages

There is a predominant idea that Chinese people don’t mind working for low wages. However, highly-educated Chinese people that therefore have the ability to be good teachers will not be happy with just any salary.

Therefore, before choosing a cheap course with small groups, I recommend that you ask yourself how much they could be paying the teacher. If the salary has to be really low for the school to be able to make a profit, don’t expect the teacher to be very committed to their work, as they won’t care about losing their job at all.

This article is dedicated to analyzing the best public and private educational establishments for studying Chinese in Guilin and Yangshuo, two incredible places to live in the Guangxi province. In addition, we will analyze the pros and cons of studying Chinese in these two places.

If you’re interested in a more general overview of studying Chinese in China, you can readthis article.

The pros of studying Chinese in Guilin or Yangshuo

Mandarin is quite extensive: Given that they are important tourist destinations, both Guilin and Yangshuo are home to people from different parts of the country, which means that Mandarin is quite commonly used. In addition, the local dialect belongs to the southwestern branch of Mandarin, which is characterized by not having the retroflex consonants (zh, ch, sh, r) that standard Mandarin has. Despite the fact that the dialects of Guilin and Yangshuo can sometimes be incomprehensible for standard Mandarin speakers, they continue to be dialects that are a lot closer than those in the country’s southeast, such as Guangdong or Shanghai dialect.

Today we interview Reuven Lerner, founder of Mandarin Weekly, a website (and weekly newsletter) that provides you the last news and tools for learning Chinese online.

I discovered Mandarin Weekly years ago, while I was researching new Chinese learning tools for updating our articles on “Free Resources to Learn Chinese Online“. I’m a subscriber since then.

But let’s get started!

About Mandarin Weekly

Reuven, thank you for accepting this interview. Can you tell us something about your background and how you got into Chinese language?

I have been a software consultant with my own business since 1995. Over the last decade, most of my work has been as a trainer, going to high-tech companies and teaching their programmers the tools and technologies that I know well – Python, Git, and data science. (If you don’t know what those are, that’s fine!).

About five years ago, a training company based in China asked me to come and teach some courses at their clients’ offices. The courses went well, and I’ve been traveling to China 3-5 times each year ever since. I mostly go to Beijing and Shanghai, but was fortunate enough to go to Nanjing about two years ago, too.

Before my first trip, I asked several friends what I should expect. Two of them said that I should learn some Chinese. That, of course, sounded like crazy talk – after all, we know that Chinese is impossible to learn, right? The friends told me that the language isn’t so bad, and that learning at least a few words would be useful.[Read more…]

In this article, we analyze where to study Chinese in Memphis and what to keep in mind.

The Chinese community in Memphis

Memphis has a relatively small Chinese community compared with other cities in the country, consisting of less than 2,000 people. In addition, many of the Chinese residents in the city are native speakers of dialects other than Mandarin. Finding good native Mandarin teachers is therefore quite difficult. Nonetheless, over the past years, the University of Memphis has managed to attract a considerable number of Chinese people who are native speakers of Mandarin and who are highly-educated.

Public schools in Memphis

The Confucius Institute at the University of Memphis (CIUM)

The CIUM is a collaboration between the University of Memphis and the China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (Hanban), an institution that is a body of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, in the goal of creating the first Confucius Institute in Tennessee. The CIUM’s goal is to promote Chinese culture and it is responsible for the degree program in Asian Studies and International Trade. In addition, it is responsible for Chinese programs at multiple public and private schools in the area, such as Barbara K. Lipman School, The Campus School, St. Mary’s Episcopal School, Lausanne Collegiate School, Hutchison School and The Bodine School.

Chinese Academy of Memphis

The Chinese Academy of Memphis is a non-profit organization responsible for promoting Chinese language and culture in the city. The Chinese Academy of Memphis collaborates with multiple educational centers in the city, such as White Station High School, Cordova High School and Rhodes College.

Private schools in Memphis

Memphis Chinese School

Memphis Chinese School is a private school specialized in teaching Chinese language and culture to children. The school offers lessons on Sundays, mainly for children that are native speakers of Chinese, but it also offers classes for non-native speakers.

What to keep in mind before signing up for Chinese classes in Memphis

Without a doubt, the previous list is missing other schools that also offer quality classes. Nonetheless, before signing up for Chinese lessons in Memphis, you should consider some of the aspects that can have a clear effect on the quality of courses.

1. Teachers

The majority of educational establishments are incapable of evaluating the quality of Chinese teachers. Finding good Chinese teachers in Memphis can be very difficult.

The majority of Chinese people living abroad are from rural areas in the country’s southeast, where people speak dialects that are very different from standard Mandarin, such as the provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang. Being Chinese doesn’t mean that someone is a native speaker of Mandarin, and even less so that they know how to teach. Because of this, I recommend that before signing up for classes, you ask yourself: who chooses the teachers?

2. Study programs

Chinese is very different from Western languages, which means that you can’t use the same system as for other languages. Many schools use study programs based on the programs that have worked for other languages, and this is a huge mistake, especially when combined with teachers that have little experience teaching.

3. Wages

Lots of people think that Chinese people are happy to work hard for little money. However, Chinese people from large cities that are highly-educated will not be happy with just any salary.

Before choosing a cheap course with only a few students, you should ask yourself how much money they could be paying the teacher. If the wages have to be really low for the school to be able to turn a profit, don’t expect the teacher to make much of an effort to offer quality classes.

Interrogative substitutions谁 (shéi/shuí)，什么 (shénme)，哪 (nǎ)

Interrogative substitutions are similar to the “wh – question words” in English, or the interrogative pronouns in Italian. When using interrogative substitutions, the order of the phrase doesn’t change.

The interrogative substitutions, precisely, substitute the word that should be found in the answer. When formulating a question through the use of interrogative substitutes, 吗 (ma) is never put at the end of the phrase.

Note that 谁 (shéi) can also be inserted into phrases in the affirmative or negative form and with the value , respectively of “all” and “none”. 谁 must be followed by 都 (dōu) “all” or 也 (yě) “even”.[Read more…]

The complement of company

The complement of company indicates the person or inanimate being with which one finds in a specific circumstance or with whom one does or undergoes an action. The complement of company is introduced by the prepositions 跟 (gēn) “with”, 和 (hé) “and/ together with”.

The topic-comment structure

In short, the Chinese phrase can also be structured according to a sequence that is conventionally called “topic-comment”. The topic, located at the initial position of the phrase, is a name or defined noun syntagm that can be named before; the comment is the statement that follows which says something about the topic. The comment, usually, follows the syntactic order SVO, where S is for subject, V is for verb and O is for object.

What divides the topic from the comment? Usually in the written form of the language, there’s a comma inserted between the topic and comment for a pause; but in the spoken language we can find (though it isn’t obligatory) one of these modal particles: 啊 (a); 呢 (ne); 吧 (ba).

Hi there,
fill in the form below and we'll suggest to you a reliable agency that will help you to find a private school or a University in China to study Chinese (or get a degree on a different field):